Dr Michelle Lucas

Executive Director,

CMM - Social Change

Dr Michelle Lucas is the Executive Director of CMM - Social Change and Senior Fellow of the Harwood Institute (U.S.A). As Founder of CMM, Michelle has worked for 20 years designing, implementing and refining a collective approach to address complex social challenges throughout Australia and Asia. At its heart, CMM aims to enable communities and committed stakeholders to learn and grow together to strengthen social capital and to build a connected society. Michelle has herself provided long-term and embedded backbone support to place-based collaborations and communities to meet this vision. She currently facilitates community and collective effort across social challenges including early childhood development, child safety, education attainment and retention, social inclusion, equity and aboriginal disadvantage and opportunity. Michelle’s work with The Harwood Institute also focuses on enabling impact nationally and globally while codifying the aspects of collective action which can build shared responsibility.

Michelle’s previous roles include being the Founding Executive Director of Opportunity Child, a national collective initiative to address childhood vulnerability. Prior to working with Opportunity Child, Michelle had been the Executive Director of Collective Impact at Desert Knowledge Australia, working specifically with remote and very remote communities.

Michelle has a deep commitment to collective, integrated approaches which allow for sense-making together and which keep local people firmly at the centre of every effort. She believes that intergenerational shift can only be fully supported by a concurrent reimagining of the ecosystems and policies affecting our most vulnerable children and families.